Stretchable Cables, Designed for Robots, Handy for Humans

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Stretchable Cables, Designed for Robots, Handy for Humans

If you ever yanked a power cable towards an outlet only to have it pull up a couple inches short, you're going to love this stretchable cable from Asahi Kasei Fibers.

The wiring is called Roboden, and like the best of Japanese innovation it was designed for humanoid robots. According to the boffins behind the cable, human skin can stretch by 1.5x, so they made a wire that could do the same.

You can probably guess how it works. Inside the retro-style woven outer casing is a stretchy core around which the conducting wires wrap in a spiral pattern. It works just like a curly telephone cord, only the wires are all inside the cable.

Asahi Kasei Fibers has come up with various potential products, including USB and power cables. And as you can see by the ceaseless exercising of the poor booth-boy in the video above, the cables are ideal for wearable electronics. It could be ideal for embedding headphone cables into jackets, or for using on bikes and other vehicles where you need to connect sections which move relative to each other. Or you could just do what I would do, and make yourself a killer Tron jumpsuit.